I happened to boot with a smallish 2fs file, and decided to increase the size by 64MB.

Then rebooted with the original file I had meant to use, only to see that it was enlarged (at least, that's what the popup said) instead of the intended target.

Guess I'll have to reboot with the file I intended to enlarge, to see if it grows as well or not.

Yes if you select to re-size a save file you have to reboot using that same save file. At boot is when the re-size is done.
When you select to re-size it works only on the next boot/reboot one time.
New selection to re-size has to be made each time you want to do it.

Curious. Where is the information to resize the file kept while you're rebooting? Surely, wherever it is, it should also contain the information regarding the name of the file to be enlarged?

Missing the enlargement by failing to reboot the same 2fs file is just a minor annoyance. But enlarging a file you didn't mean to enlarge could be a serious problem, since it can't be undone._________________otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

Thanks. I knew that, probably have an older copy around, but it always irks me that I can't get it to work in Puppy anymore.

BTW - I did try to download the latest version just now, but for some reason sourceforge and its mirrors are downloading like molasses today, at least at this end.

Will try again later.

Update, after downloading Gparted from Taiwan at top speed, the download failed with a series of nonsensical error messages, starting with "no room, try another directory" or words to that effect, and ending with "unable to read source file", after supposedly tranferring 126/127MB.

So I booted Knoppix 7.0.4, went to Preferences/Gparted (v 070), and viewed the corrupted SD card with it. Apparently, the only thing I could do was to reformat the card (I used FAT16). I then copied the files from the LiveCD, edited syslinux.cfg, set the boot flag, and tried to boot with it. But the system reported the disk was unbootable.

So I took it back to the Universal Installer, used the USB Flash drive function, left the MBR alone, re-edited the syslinux.cfg, renamed the sfs file to .bak, and tried booting again. Finally, success...

What have I learned?

...

UPDATE: several hours of further experience with both flash installers have changed my mind. Bootflash is more versatile and faster, it just takes a bit more attention.

...

It also turns out to be unnecessary to rename or delete the sfs file from the flash media when changing pmedia=usbflash to =atahd in syslinux.cfg to with sfs and 2fs files on the hard drive.

Nor is it even necessary to place all the 2fs files in the same folder with the sfs file. But it may be necessary to keep lupu_528.sfs in the root directory or in a folder in the root directory. I haven't tested this.

When I click on the menu/system/gparted tab, I get the menu of drives on the system. When I click on one of them, the menu disappears, and nothing happens. When I look at running processes, there's no sign of gparted.

This is starting to look like a bad download of the Puppy version iso.

Try this to see if it makes a difference.
Boot with the Puppy live CD
Use boot option puppy pfix=ram
Now try to use Gparted.
What happens?

Sorry I've taken so long to reply to your suggestion above. The answer is yes, gparted works when I use the option pfix=ram. However, I booted from the usbflash install. Apparently the issue has something to do with the 2fs file.

But now I'm trying to figure out why I can't install puppy to flash on a 2GB SD card although I can do it on a 500MB SD or a 256MB CF card.

Every time I do, Universal install declares success, but the card merely becomes unreadable, and I have to go to Gparted, or to a camera, to reformat it. Even Windows 7 can't fix it._________________otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

After considerable fiddling, I managed to compose a 256CF flash card that reliably boots lupuplus from the hard drive.

But unlike the 500MB SD card I've been using up to now, simply changing pmedia=usbflash to pmedia=atahd in syslinux.cfg didn't do the trick. It would only load from the card itself, ignoring the change.

But if I booted with the command puppy pdev1=sda1, then the hard drive was searched, the 2fs files on it were presented, and the lupuplus sfs (which is too large to fit on the CF card) was loaded into RAM.

I then found that adding the line

Code:

pdev1=sda1

after

Code:

pmedia=atahd

in syslinux.cfg achieved the same result.

However, either way, the loader then displays :

Quote:

searching deeper in sub-sub-folders in partitions

which has never appeared with the atahd argument on the SD card.

And the message makes no sense, since the lupu_528.sfs file is in a folder in the root directory of sda1. And this message still displays if I add the argument

Quote:

/pupsave

(the folder where the sfs and 2fs files reside), nor does the search (the longest part of the loading process) seem any faster than when booting with the SD card with only

And the message makes no sense, since the lupu_528.sfs file is in a folder in the root directory of sda1. And this message still displays if I add the argument

/pupsave

Try making this

Code:

psubdir=pupsave

_________________I have found, in trying to help people, that the things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected

And the message makes no sense, since the lupu_528.sfs file is in a folder in the root directory of sda1. And this message still displays if I add the argument

/pupsave

Try making this

Code:

psubdir=pupsave

Yes, bigpup. That worked. I timed the interval from hitting ENTER at the puppy boot prompt to the moment the 2fs files were displayed at

81 seconds without the spsubdir argument, and
38 seconds after it was added

A substantial speed-up, thanks.

Interestingly, I then added pdev1=sda1 psubdir=pupsave to the SD card's syslinux.cfg file also, but the gain was much smaller in that case, a mere 10 seconds shaved off.

49 vs 39 seconds.

My guess is that the loader on the CF card was searching further than the one on the SD card before the psubdir argument was added. But I can't imagine why.

Presumably pmedia=atahd automatically sets the SD loader to search the root directory of the first partition of disk0 first, followed by the the folders in that directory.

But the argument that the CF card required to find the same directory would have set it to do exactly the same thing, since sda1 is the first partition of disk0.

I'm tempted to experiment further by putting extra 2fs files elsewhere on the hard drives, including in folders within folders, where they're not supposed to be found at all. I know that when I boot from a LiveCd (I don't have one burned at the moment), the loader searches all storage devices on the system for 2fs files, and the partition on which the chosen 2fs file is located becomes "home" and can't be unmounted.

However, I wonder whether more than a handful of us care about this.

I couldn't resist moving one 2fs file into the root directory of sda1 and removing all but the pmedia=atahd argument from the SD card's cfg file. The loader then showed only the two 2fs files remaining in the pupsave folder.

So I conclude that it takes the loader 10 seconds to examine the 21 files and 99 folders (or as many of the latter as precede "pupsave' in its search order) in the root directory of sda1 looking for lupu_528.sfs. And this explains the time saved by adding the psubdir=pupsave .
argument.

But why it takes the loader launched from the CF card 32 seconds longer to do exactly the same thing remains a mystery to me._________________otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo

Sometimes only one person digs deep enough to discover new information, but it is still very helpful. This sort of thing is always useful information. It adds to the overall knowledge pool and helps us understand the finer points of what is going on. Good research.

Some of this speed difference could be caused by the different storage devices read speeds._________________I have found, in trying to help people, that the things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected

Sometimes only one person digs deep enough to discover new information, but it is still very helpful. This sort of thing is always useful information. It adds to the overall knowledge pool and helps us understand the finer points of what is going on. Good research.

This is just to say that Puppy Linux 5.2.8 is so reliable and 5.2.8 005-2 so complete. I appreciate your keep offering this version with further improvements.
I am also user of Slacko 5.3.3, Puppy Linux Precise Pangolin 5.4.1, and Lighthouse64 Mariner 5.15 in several PCs and Laptops at home and in my father´s home, with very good experience, but I consider Puppy 5.2.8 a classic that deserves keeping it up.
Thank you.

Some of this speed difference could be caused by the different storage devices read speeds.

I thought of that initially, because the 256MB CF card is older than the 500MB SD, and would likely be a bit slower to read into RAM. But I dismissed that as an insignificant factor because:

1. I assume the entire loader code is read into RAM before the boot process begins, ie. before the boot prompt, after which all activity takes place strictly between RAM and the hard drives. And this is the interval in which the speed differences were noted.

I've just tested this assumption, and it proved WRONG. The card needs to remain in the card reader until the matching 2fs and sfs files have been located on the hard drive, or the load process will fail.

2. even if the assumption above is mistaken, the amount of code to be copied from the CF card is so small, that it couldn't account for any of the speed difference recorded.

I tested this by copying all of the Puppy files on the CF card in question to a test folder on one of my hard drives, using my slowest card reader.

The total Byte count of the files (since lupu_528.sfs isn't on the card) is only 4085K, and it took less than 2 seconds (1.5 by my stop watch) to copy all of these files to the hdd. Presumably, reading them into RAM would be no slower.

The same read from the SD card (an early "Pro" level 500MB SD) took a bit less than a second to complete.

I then repeatedly compared the time from reset to presentation of the hard drive's 2fs options (at which point the card is no longer a factor, and can be removed) took 58 seconds with the SD card, and 60 seconds with the CF card.

So assumption #2 seems to be correct. The "professional" 500MB SD card does read demonstrably faster than the 256MB CF card, as indicated in the first test above. But that doesn't translate into any significant difference in loading Puppy.

So why adding

Code:

psubdir=pupsave

to the syslinux.cfg file should save 42 seconds of loading time with the CF card, but only 10 seconds with the SD card remains a mystery._________________otropogo@gmail.com facebook.com/otropogo